AVAST!

this is the first time i've ever read a mike lupica column and found myself nodding in agreement. maybe it's the pirates of the caribbean reference, maybe it's that he sounds sensible for a change... all in all i hope he goes back to churning out vitriolic nonsense soonish, 'cause my skin is crawling, savvy?

A-Rod is starting to feel the pressure the way Peyton Manning is in football. It doesn't matter how great either one of them is, and they are as great as anybody could ever be in their two sports, or how much money they make. And nobody in their respective sports makes more money. They know they better get a ring, or else. The Red Sox can't attack A-Rod's credentials as a player. So they attack him at what they consider his weakest point:

No ring, no stripes, no Yankee. Not a real Yankee, anyway.

But once you go down this road, where do you stop? Don Mattingly never played a World Series. So what's the deal with Donnie Baseball - a real Yankee with a dispensation? Dave Righetti pitched a no-hitter and then went to the bullpen because that's what he thought a real Yankee should do. He played in a Yankee World Series, but didn't win. Did Righetti ever officially earn his stripes?

...Cone earned his pinstripes forever, and so we thought, when he won Game 3 of the 1996 World Series against the Braves, at a time when the Yankees had lost the first two games of that Series at home. Later on, he came back and pitched like a star for the Yankees after suffering an aneurysm in his pitching shoulder.

Except that Coney then made the tragic Yankee mistake of finishing his career playing for the following two teams:

1) Red Sox.
2) Mets.

At which point you imagined his old Yankee jersey hanging in a locker someplace and those pinstripes he had earned so valiantly falling off as if they were being eaten by moths.

You can see how tricky this whole thing is. Maybe it's not as simple as the Red Sox or A-Rod seem to believe. Maybe it's like "Pirates of the Caribbean." There's no real code to being a real Yankee. It's just more like guidelines. [the daily news]